Aplicación del Intercambio Iónico.

Three well-known poems -- “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” “The Snow- Man,” and “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” --fall into a group of poems

in Harmonium that are terse and not verbally complex. Those poems can profitably be viewed as dealing with the same set of claims as explored in the longer poems but expressed through the opposite end of the prism. Stevens’ universe of concerns in the shorter poems is comparable to those pursued in the longer poems, but the approach is more schematic and less verbally discursive. In the longer poems, language presents a sort of wall of meaning and several

approaches to the theme are taken; in these shorter poems, meaning is inferential and the approach tends to be glancing and indirect, like epigrams.

These three poems are of course not in blank verse, and only “Ice Cream” has some rhyme in it. In a way, all three poems deal with a sort of nothing, or an absence: “Snow Man” deals with human perception and the world, “Ice Cream” with death and human vanity, and “Blackbird” with death and the relational nature of knowledge.

As is typical of Stevens, “Blackbird” is not really about a blackbird, but about “looking” at a blackbird, and ways of looking at a blackbird. Thus, the poem is about the human relationship with, and perception of, the world, and in large part, of other humans. Kenner (78-79) has some fun with this by saying that “the blackbird is alien from the kingdom of traditional poetry, where he obtains a visa only as part of the company baked in a pie; and alien also from that sphere of feeling which Wordsworth denominated ‘Nature.’” No sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused has its dwelling, so far as we intuit, in him.” Thirteen is a peculiar number; Vendler calls it “eccentric,” (85), some might call it unlucky. We are immediately tempted to ask, of the likely infinite number of

ways of looking at a blackbird, why these thirteen? Are these categories or some sort of types, or just thirteen more or less random instances? Finally, why a blackbird, which can be viewed as a symbol of death, or a carrion bird feeding on misfortune?

Stevens’ blackbird is more complex than just a symbol of loss and the absence of caring; Stevens’ blackbird seems to have human characteristics, such as being observant and mindful, subject to the vicissitudes of life and death, being in relationship, being capable of indirection, and of conveying mood. Thus, if “Blackbird” is about human observation, it may be also about human observation of humans, and thus showing the blackbird’s traits as human traits. Stanza VIII discloses that the “I” of the poem knows “noble accents” and “lucid, inescapable rhythms” but the “I” also knows that the blackbird is “involved in what I know.” “Involved” suggests a sort of unindicted wrongdoer status -- the blackbird is complicit, or an actual wrongdoer. Stanza VIII states that even the “bawds of euphony” (similar to “Monocle’s” “fops of fancy”) would “cry out sharply” at the sight of blackbirds “flying in a green light.” As with the green cockatoo (as in “Sunday Morning”), green may stand for a sort of freedom, perhaps spring-like, fecund and lush, but also perhaps young and immature. Stanza XIII perhaps brings the poem to a conclusion, and thus should be given special weight, talking of a winter world in which “it was evening all afternoon,” “it was snowing,” and “it was going to snow,” to keep on snowing. And the blackbird waits in the trees: “The blackbird sat/In the cedar limbs,” calling to mind “Snow Man.” The various stanzas of “Blackbird” present what seem to be exercises in relational dealing in

and with the world, with the blackbird being a key intermediary between the “I,” the world and others. What the blackbird sees is often the stripped down version of human interaction, and thus a form of salvage value.

If “Blackbird” is making claims about relational human knowledge, “Snow-Man” seems to make epistemological claims, or perhaps claims as to the preconditions of knowledge. The title centers on what is perhaps an amusing children’s entertainment or perhaps the “abominable” snowman, a more

threatening figure. The poem itself is a fifteen-line, single, contnuous sentence which sets forth a convoluted and complex series of related positive and negative claims, which can be expressed as a set of if/then statements:

(1) If the observer has a “mind of winter,” then the observer may be able to “regard the frost and the boughs” “of the pine trees crusted with snow”; and

(2) If the observer “has been cold a long time,” then the observer may “behold” the junipers “shagged with ice” and the spruces “rough in the distant glitter of the January sun”; and

(3) In either case, in doing (1) or (2), the observer can avoid thinking of any misery in the sound of the wind or of a few leaves, and:

(3A) That sound is the sound of the land, full of the same wind blowing in the same bare place;

(3B) The wind is blowing for the listener “who listens in the snow”; and

(4) Being nothing himself, the observer will behold (i) nothing that is not there; and (ii) the nothing that is.

Thus, it is a necessary but not sufficient condition to have a “mind of winter” to be able to regard the frost and boughs and see with specificity the details of the world before him without an overcoming emotional reaction (claim 1). We cannot help but think of the lonely Stevens, stoically sitting in Elizabeth Park or walking to work in the winter. To fully see those details, the observer must be cold for a long time, i.e., have observed in nature under difficult circumstances for a considerable period (claim 2). Having met those two conditions, the observer can fully observe without “misery” i.e., without overlaying human emotions or experience (claim 3). Claims 3A and 3B seem digressive, quasi-tautologies but perhaps discloses some degree of continuity and universality of the experience of all observers (the same cold wind blows in the same place for all observers). That wind is blowing “for” the observer who listens in the wind (i.e., has a mind of winter and has been cold for a long time); this seems to add the observer as part of the experience of the world; that is, this claim would tend to undercut a purely realist view of nature. Claim 4 bundles the first five claims into one perplexing conclusion. This austere, emptied out observer seems to be almost pure perception (“nothing himself”), and is then able to behold what is really there in perception (“nothing that is not there”) and also the

“nothing that is.” We would be tempted to read that line as “the nothing that is there” to balance the statement as against the first part. It is not clear, however, that such an approach is appropriate. The state described in claim 4 is a sort of bare existential state, stripped of identity, consisting of a few key functions. This

state could be viewed as a sort of minimal salvage value, a minimal state to call an existence human.

The poem seems consciously to draw a distinction between the verbs “regard” and “behold” but reinforcement of the concepts is intended. One can view the process of “regarding” as being active, intentional, and durational, while “beholding” may be a more immediate, insightful even, registering a sense of significance. For example, the OED lists a variety of verb definitions for “regard,” but the predominant theme seems to be to look upon with a degree of intention, i.e., “with a particular attitude or feeling” or to consider, look upon as being something specified. Now it is true that one of the listed definitions of “behold” is “to regard with the mind, have regard to, attend to or consider,” which tends to muddy the analysis. And it is hard to see the distinction in usage between the “regard” in claim 1 and the “behold” in claim 2. But there is a distinct sense of a more purely observational vision to “behold”: “To receive the impression of (anything) through the eyes, to see: the ordinary current sense.” The sense that seems more appropriate to the poem (a sort of spontaneous seeing of a

phenomenon) is not explicitly acknowledged by the OED. But the poem seems to suggest that the properly austere observer, purified or clarified into a position to see the world without regard to emotion or an overlay of human experience, is able to “behold” the world I.e., see and assess value) in a unique and perhaps insightful way, perhaps in the manner of the skilled and experienced claims man.

One noteworthy aspect of this process of reification of perception is that the specifics of experience are increasingly stripped out of the observer’s view.

The observer goes from a very specific set of empirical data (pine trees crusted with snow, junipers shagged with ice, spruces rough in the distant glitter of the January) to a more general set of sense experiences (the sound of the wind, the sound of a few leaves) to a set of concepts relating to sense experience (the proposition that the wind is the same wind blowing in the same place) to, finally, two purely conceptual categories that relate to experience: “nothing that is not there” and “the nothing that is.” This seems to be a reductive process that strips out all accidental characteristics away, and leaves just a bare-bones, schematic view of the world.

At least one strain of criticism of this poem views this process of perception set forth in “Snow Man” as Nietzschean, focusing on, for example, portions of The Birth of Tragedy stating that before man can become divine, the last mythologies must be stripped from the human (Leggett 188 discussing Bloom 63). There is also a phenomenological trope of the poem as well in which “the world is revealed in the sense of it held by a living consciousness” (Leggett 188 quoting Doggett 129). Leggett goes on to observe that “the spare form of the poem evidently invites us to fill in its blank spaces with our own conceptions” while at the same time “indirectly” warning us that “the only mind that could match up with it perfectly would be a blank mind free of preconceptions, which would then comprehend nothing.” In that view, the poem becomes, in a way similar to “Blackbird,” a poem about perspective and point of view. Meaningful perception requires an observer with a point of view or a perspective. This accords with Kant’s argument that a minimally human point of view must be able

to identify all of the observer’s perceptions as his/her perceptions (see Crtichley 28-29).

Another useful Nietzschean comparison is suggested by Ecce Homo, Nietzsche’s last published work before his institutionalization. In the book, Nietzsche expresses his view that philosophy, which is akin to clearing out old value and judgment structures, “means living voluntarily among ice and high mountains--- seeking out everything strange and questionable in existence…,” not dissimilar to the process outlined in “Snow Man,” (674). As in “Snow Man,” the situation is difficult but the rewards substantial: “The ice is near, the solitude tremendous---but how calmly all things lie in the light! How freely one

breathes!” Further, Nietzsche views this exercise as one involving courage, like the snow-man’s ability to bear the cold of winter without feeling emotion: “Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from

hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself,” again like the austere, characterless world of the snow observer.

In the closing of the poem, Stevens skillfully leaves the exact point ambiguous. We can certainly argue from the syntax that the comparison is between nothing that is not there (i.e., the observer beholds only reality, stripped of personality, emotion, or other human traits) and the nothing that is there (suggesting that the rest of human knowledge and consciousness is effectively an absence). Or perhaps we can read the line as written as the nothing that is, i.e., a form of negation that has some sort of positive ontological relevance. At this point, we could think of the poem as expressing the union of two sets (since (i)

and (ii) are joined by an “and”): nothing that is not that (a minimalist reality) and the “nothing” that exists (not necessarily present to be perceived by the snowman but something that he realizes through his experience of the stripped-down reality). In a way, that union could be the entirety of human experience. Doggett makes the point that this snow man is no man, and by showing what he would not do, the poem also suggests what humans would do (130).

If “Blackbird” and “Snow Man” are complexly inferential poems, “The Emperor of Ice Cream” is simpler and more direct. Ice cream is an even sillier (sweeter), more transitory “treat” than a snowman, and the notion that there could be an emperor of ice cream is a silly way to express objection to what itself turns out to be a silly proposition, not itself stated in the poem but there to be inferred: that there could be any ultimate, controlling human factor in the universe. Thus, the claim that the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream is consistent with death`s being the mother of all beauty and the growth, maturity and then rotting of the fruit in “Monocle.” The theme of change is set forth symbolically for us by the four characters in the poem: the roller of big cigars (the muscular, power male who is apparently asked to make ice cream in recognition of the death addressed in the poem), the wenches (who “dawdle in such dress as they are used to wear,” one would assume provocative), the boys (who always seem to follow the

wenches, and are wrapping memorial flowers in not yesterday’s papers, but in last month’s) and then the dead woman (cold and dumb). The central event in “Ice Cream” is the death of this now “horny” old woman, suggesting the hardness of rigor mortis, and what seems to be her viewing (another form of “beholding”) in

her kitchen. There is not much honor here for the decedent -- if we let “be be the finale of seem,” what she is, is dead, cold, dumb, “horny” and missing knobs. The theme of vision and beholding is emphasized by the lamp affixing its beam, in what must surely be an intentional act to highlight the conclusion of the poem. In this poem, as in “Snow-Man,” we cut through appearances to get to a reality, and in “Ice Cream,” the reality is that not even the muscular, cigar-rolling alpha male has a claim to be anything more than emperor of the ice cream that he himself makes, and that only temporarily, until it melts or is consumed. Change is the real emperor here, and change takes our pathetic old lady’s embroidery, her only earthly occupation, and converts it to a funeral shroud. Thus is her accord and satisfaction, perhaps also providing a consolation prize to her mourners. X. Imagination in Harmonium

Stevens is known as a poet of the imagination, continuing a tradition from Emerson and Wordsworth. We can see the key role of the imagination in key poems such as “Key West,” in which the woman singer is presented at the “maker of the song she sang;” that singing process, in which she is the “single artificer of the world/In which she sang” shows the generative role of the creative process in Stevens in producing and ordering the human world. The human world is based on an external reality but that reality is modified by the imagination into a fully human experience: “there was never a world for her/Except the one she sang and, singing, made.” This developed view was presented by Stevens in Ideas of Order in 1936, after the roughly 10-year essentially silent period following Harmonium, during which Stevens is said to have concentrated on his insurance career.

Similar approaches to the role of the imagination are presented in “The Man with the Blue Guitar” (1937) and such later poems as “Of Modern Poetry” and “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.”

Stevens’ prose work addresses the role of the imagination at length, but the prose work considerably postdates Harmonium. In “Imagination as Value,”, Stevens takes pains to distinguish what he views as the proper understanding of the imagination from what he views as the “romantic” version of the faculty (something akin to “fancy”). For Stevens, imagination is “the liberty of the mind” and that liberty is exercised, in essence, in the creation of the world experienced by the human subject (Complete Poetry and Prose 727-28). As Stevens puts it, “the imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos” (737). To use other terms, imagination enables us to synthesize experience and categorize it. Stevens is admittedly no philosopher and his explanation of the role of the imagination in his prose writing tends to be only somewhat helpful. His attempted philosophical writings

(notably, “A Collect of Philosophy,” (850-867)) are derivative, tend to obscurity and are now rarely cited. Critchley calls them “thin gruel indeed” (49) and

“frankly disappointing” (31). Stevens there draws a rather hackneyed distinction between philosophy and poetry, trying to view poetry not merely as an exercise in thought or reason, but also imagination at work.

Stevens’ mature approach to the issue may be viewed as underlying “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction” but is evident even on an incipient level in Harmonium. For example, in “A High-Toned Old Christian Woman” in

Harmonium, the opening position anticipates the later poem: “Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.” However, Harmonium expresses this view only obliquely. “A High-Toned Christian Woman” seems to be a debate between an authoritative voice (comparable to the voice in “Sunday Morning”) and the old woman; the old woman, presumably a widow, is aligned with “the moral law” and the authoritative voice with the “opposing law;” this latter approach may be comparable to the world view put forward in “Sunday Morning” as an alternative to the Christian world being rejected. Somehow this “supreme fiction” is brought forward by “disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed/Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade.” This “bawdiness, unpurged by epitaph” (which recalls the “bawds of euphony” in “Blackbird”) may generate “novelties of the sublime” from what